You may have heard about the large underground seed vault in Svalbard, Norway, which opened in 2008. But you might be surprised to learn there is a similar facility in the Rocky Mountain region. The National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado, has been operating since the 1950s.
In 1958 the U.S. Department of Agriculture established the first federal seed bank in Fort Collins to preserve valuable seeds for our food supply. It was opened during the Cold War and is sometimes referred to as a “doomsday” vault.
However, researcher Daren Harmel says their work goes beyond addressing apocalyptic scenarios.
“We get asked the question a lot about being some sort of doomsday vault or to be in response of some cataclysmic problem around the world. But that is absolutely not what this facility is designed for,” Harmel said. “This facility was designed to support U.S. agriculture every day, as agriculture faces threats.”
The facility distributes plant and animal samples almost daily, or at least weekly, to support agricultural advancements.
Hannah Tetreault is the seed curator for the laboratory, which houses a large living collection used by research scientists and breeders. She helps oversee two long-term seed storage areas: a conventional vault freezer and a cryogenic vault.
"All of our seeds are different accessions and so they have different genes. And so, we here are preserving those by storing them in optimal conditions, testing them, and making sure that they’re alive so that then we, in turn, are preserving all of that genetic diversity that exists in all of these different seeds,” explained Tetreault.
The specialized areas from where the seeds are freeze-dried, to the main storage freezer, to the cryogenic vault are all under careful lock and key and behind heavy metal doors. The huge conventional freezers store about 650,000 bags of seeds. Every bag has a bar code for database entry where Tetreault can locate a certain accession of seeds within the vault in minutes.
The seeds need to be kept alive at the right temperature and humidity. They’re also carefully protected within the facility from natural disasters.
“There was a great deal of engineering that went into designing and building this facility because we, as U.S. Agriculture, can’t afford to have the samples in this building destroyed. And so, the designers did things like building a vault,” said Harmel.
From the outside, it looks like a regular building. But once inside you can tell it’s a bank vault with concrete, rebar-reinforced to withstand a tornado. It’s also designed to withstand the worst flood event that could happen while ensuring the samples are above that flood level.
When agricultural challenges arise, backup plans are crucial.
“We’ve talked about threats three or four times. Diseases, pests, changing weather patterns – it’s very important that research agencies like the Agricultural Research Service provide research and provide these genetic materials so that agriculture can stay ahead of all these threats,” Harmel said.
A threat, for example, would be an insect, like the aphid.
“The U.S. wheat was affected in the 1980s by a new aphid, the Russian wheat aphid, and it decimated the wheat crop,” said Tetreault. “USDA entomologists spent over a decade sorting through many seeds to find two accessions of wheat seed coming from our seed bank that was found to carry a gene that had resistance to that Russian wheat aphid. And now that gene is being bred into a lot of our wheat cultivars.”
The cryogenic vault holds genetic materials such as pineapple, avocado and lettuce in high-tech storage tanks. Amy Gurza, a biological science technician, filled one tank with liquid nitrogen to keep it at a frigid minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit.
From sunflower, wheat, rice, corn and tomato seeds to livestock DNA and tiny microbes, the Fort Collins gene bank helps safeguard agriculture.
“We use the word priceless a lot in our just normal speech,” explained Harmel. “But very few things are priceless. The seeds and all the collections in this building are truly priceless.”
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